Country Insights

Country Insights

Since he lost the August 12th primary, President Mauricio Macri’s policies have changed drastically: he’s been forced to implement measures suggested by his victorious challenger, Alberto Fernández, who is now on track to win the Oct. 27th general election to become the country’s next president. ...

Consumer price inflation came in at 0.86%, m/m, in August, which was notably lower than the consensus and our forecast of 1.3%. As a result, 12-month rate declined more than expected to 15% from 16.6% in July. Likewise, producer prices fell in the month by 0.6%, taking the 12-month rate sharply l...

Similar to the past year, the country once again waited to find out if South Africa’s economy was in a technical recession in the first half of the year, which would have made it the second consecutive one. The past year’s results had indeed indicated that the country had experienced a technical ...

With President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s Party together with its allies wielding a qualified majority in the Chamber of Deputies and just shy of one in the Senate as the new session of Congress gets underway, their legislative agenda becomes de facto that of the entire Congress. And judging b...

The debt rescheduling announcements of last week, as might have been expected, did little to calm markets anxiety and, on the contrary, acted as a coordination signal to spur capital flight, forcing the BCRA to continue selling reserves to keep the dollar value in check.Also, bank withdrawals of ...

​The Amazon remains on the political agenda. President Jair Bolsonaro takes part in a meeting in Colombia with countries of the Amazon Region. Thursday is the deadline for Bolsonaro to sanction the bill on Abuse of Authority. The Senate CCJ votes the Pension Reform report. Senate may vote tran...

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has promoted the creation of a series of regional international intergovernmental organizations to keep as many former Soviet Republics as possible close to Moscow. The CIS, the Eurasian Economic Union or the CSTO are among the best known examples of thi...

The “Bolsonaro style” of governing has been clearly revealed to the world by the fires that are multiplying in the Amazon: he started by confronting and accusing his critics of responsibility, but when faced by threats of commercial retaliation he did what he should have done from the outset, ord...

The resurgence of the Colombian guerrilla announced on Thursday 29 August by two of its former leaders, Iván Márquez and Jesús Santrich, is raising tensions in Venezuela as well as Colombia. Márquez and Santrich lead a group of Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) dissidents who, in numb...

The Turkish economy contracted by 1.5%, y/y, in the second quarter of the year (1.4%, WDA), which was less steep than both the consensus and our forecast had it. As a corollary, quarterly (or sequential) growth, at 1.2%, was also markedly better than our forecast (Graph 1). The key driver of our ...

The issue of moving the capital city out of Java has been alive for more than half a century, since Indonesia’s first president, Ir. Soekarno, promoted an idea of moving the capital to Palangkaraya, the capital of Central Kalimantan province on Borneo. So when President Joko Widodo raised the sam...

GDP grew by 0.4% (annualized rate of 1.8%) in the second quarter, reversing the contraction of 0.1% in the first quarter. The rise was higher than indicated by the behavior of the IBC-Br, and greater than the median projections reported by Bloomberg. The intensity and composition of this growth d...

At the Supreme Court a case against ex-president Álvaro Uribe for witness tampering is filled with intrigue, secret tapes, betrayal and revanche. To add insult to injury, the Supreme Court was found to have wiretapped Uribe. This is likely to be a political trial, in which whatever the Supreme Co...

Rates remained on hold last week, but with the MPC shifting to a more dovish forward guidance. We still do not expect further monetary loosening as long as growth remains fairly robust. The main private consumption indicators are pointing to steady household demand in early Q319. Mortgage demand...

On September 2 Moscow announced that it is inviting Iran to use ports in the disputed Crimean Peninsula. Iran is an OPEC member but this has not helped much in maintaining access to oil markets. Iranian crude oil exports have fallen by 80% due to US sanctions. However, oil product exports have no...